


With Faith and Understanding

by CaptainLeBubbles



Category: Bob's Burgers (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen, Trans Boy Louise Belcher, Transitioning, Transphobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-04
Updated: 2018-05-07
Packaged: 2019-05-02 04:26:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14536617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaptainLeBubbles/pseuds/CaptainLeBubbles
Summary: One day he realized he wasn't Louise anymore, and maybe he never had been.A series of loosely-connected shorts about Lou Belcher growing into himself.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> These aren't in chronological order, and unless otherwise stated each one is self-contained.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Louise has been making some changes.

It starts small, with a wardrobe change. Linda takes the kids shopping for school clothes for the new year and Louise decides to update her look for the first time in years. She fingers the rack of green dresses thoughtfully for a moment before shaking her head, and tells her family that she wants to try something new. Something different.

They make the usual sort of remarks- Gene says something fashion conscious (he has a lot of opinions about fashion for someone who wears the same outfit every day), Tina speculates that maybe it’s time to update her own look (Louise suspects that she’s going to try a different barrette that is almost but not quite identical to her old one), and Linda gets excited about a chance to find “the new Lou! …ise”. Louise makes an affectionately exasperated remark at that but tucks it away in the back of her mind to think about later.

She ends up with a lime green t-shirt and a pair of cargo shorts from the boys section, and when they get shoes she buys a pair of slate-and-green sneakers, also from the boys section. Her slippers would never work with the shorts, she says, and the sneakers match her shirt. Again, her family expresses their approval. It’s a good look, a new look for a new Louise, who will be turning ten soon and entering a whole new phase of her life.

As she looks over herself in her new outfit in front of the mirror, she decides she likes what she sees.

-/-

It’s a haircut next. This is more of a big deal than the outfit change; Louise hasn’t let anyone cut her hair in years. It doesn’t even grow anymore since it’s such a tangled mess of split ends now; she just fixes the hair ties sometimes and rolls with it. Brushing it would mean taking off her ears for longer than the time it takes to wash her hair (again, only occasionally), and she isn’t having with that.

She kneels in the dining room chair fidgeting impatiently while Linda tackles the matted mess of her hair, her ears clutched tight in one hand while the other drums anxious fingers on her knee. Linda was happy to cut her hair, she said, but she had to comb it out properly first so she could make the cut even, and it’s been so long and it’s so tangled that it’s taking forever.

The rest of the family are there, watching. Bob is cooking dinner while Gene and Tina sit at the dining room table, trying to calm their sister’s anxieties. She appreciates the effort, even if she’s not sure if it’s working, until after an eternity, Linda is pulling the towel away and holding up a mirror while she declares her handiwork is done.

It’s short- really short. It’d had to be, Linda said, her hair was too tangled to actually comb properly. Louise holds the mirror and stares at it for a long time while her family wait for her upset response, and then to all of their surprise she smiles. She crams her ears back on her head and is pleased that her bangs still poke out the front and there’s a little bit of the ends poking out the bottom, and thanks Linda for helping her and thanks her siblings for keeping her calm.

She spends a long time staring at the mirror while her family get dinner on the table, because it’s perfect.

-/-

The name is the next thing to go. This gets very little fanfare in itself- it’s normal for kids at that age to adopt new variations on their name, and all she does is drop the “-ise”. It’s the most tedious, though, because while getting her hair cut and getting new clothes is something she had to do once, telling people that she’d like to be called “Lou” now is something she has to do over and over for everyone she knows.

She tells Teddy and Mort first, outside of her family. Mort, who’d been Mortimer and Morty at various points of his life before settling for Mort, has no trouble, but Teddy, who’s been Teddy since birth, has a little more trouble, and they get derailed when he finds out that Mort is short for anything at all, but they’re able to get through to him with a little patience. She chalks that up as a win, because if she can get Teddy on board, she can get anyone on board.

She tells Regular-Sized Rudy next, and he shrugs and says sure, no problem, and doesn’t call her Louise anymore at all. The rest of their group take a little more time to adjust, but Lou doesn’t care about that, since they’re her siblings’ friends, not hers. Rudy was the only one whose reaction she had genuinely cared about, and since he was fine she tucks away a reminder that if he ever asks them to stop calling him Regular-Sized Rudy or wants to be called Rudolph she’ll pants anyone who doesn’t listen.

After telling her family and her closest adult non-family family and her friends and her siblings' friends, she’s tired of telling people, so she decides to just tackle everyone else at once. She waits until Mr. Frond is making an announcement in the cafeteria and steals his megaphone (he makes an ineffectual protest that she ignores) and tells the whole school in one go. Most of them don’t care, but she gets a few inane questions because the alternative is Mr. Frond talking to them again. He does eventually reclaim his megaphone, and scolds her but that’s all. He calls her Lou, though, when he does.

It feels right.

-/-

Of everyone, Bob is the first one to realize what’s really going on. He and Lou are at the farmer’s market, and he’s taking a long time to choose between two, as far as Lou is concerned, identical heads of lettuce. His concentration is interrupted when he hears a commotion and, knowing his family and Lou especially, he goes over to find Lou held up by the collar away from another kid, yelling insults and trying ineffectually to get free.

Bob is able to settle the matter without too much damage- he’ll live with the emotional toll on the other kid, because he knows Lou and he knows that there’s probably more that happened than he’s being told, and more importantly the other guy was holding his child like some kind of rabid animal and he knows there’s better ways to deal with rowdy children, especially his children, so who cares if there was some emotional damage and maybe also physical damage?

He has a hand on Lou’s shoulder and they’re preparing to just walk away when the guy gets off a parting remark that “you should keep a better eye on your son”. Bob starts to correct him, maybe throw in an insult for good measure, has his mouth opened to do just that, when he realizes that Lou has tensed up under his hand and he looks down and it _clicks_. His- daughter?- is stiff, expression a mix of euphoria and terror, eyes looking everywhere but at Bob. (She?) looks like (he?) wants to flee, and it’s only Bob’s hand still on (her? his?) shoulder preventing this.

“I’ll uh, be sure to do that,” Bob says absently, and does what he feels any sane parent would do: he takes his terrified child away from the situation, abandoning their quest for the perfect lettuce so he can take care of Lou, who regardless of everything else is still his child. He says as much, stumbling over his words and probably implying things that he’ll regret later, but when he finally trails off to an awkward halt Lou tucks a hand into his and leans into his side and mumbles a soft “thanks, Dad” and he figures they’ll be okay.

And maybe he has two sons and maybe he doesn’t but either way, he’s got three kids. That’s the part that matters.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jimmy Pesto is a dick.

No one has ever said anything official, and it hasn’t even come up since that day at the museum, but Lou thinks it’s kind of obvious that he’s going to take over the family business one day. He has a million ideas for how he’s going to change the restaurant because there’s no way he can use the pull of the best damn burgers in the world that keeps their customers loyal despite the lack of atmosphere, decorations, comfortable seating, and decent service that other restaurants might offer the way his dad does.

But he knows he’s the obvious choice. Tina and Gene are destined for big, important things; they’re going to go out into the world and leave their mark and it’s going to be a big one. The name Belcher is going to mean something thanks to them, and Lou is okay with being the one left behind to run the restaurant when Dad retires.

Dad is arguing with Jimmy Pesto again. Lou hears them when he’s coming downstairs, through the paper-thin walls between the restaurant and the apartment stairs. Jimmy is laughing over some nonsense comment he’d made and Dad is yelling, because Jimmy knows how to push his buttons like no one else does.

Halfway through Dad’s tantrum Jimmy Pesto cuts him off to yell at Andy and Ollie, who by the sounds of it are making some kind of embarrassing ruckus in the restaurant. Lou rolls his eyes and finishes the walk to the restaurant to help with damage control- and with yelling at Jimmy Pesto, who is a crapsack and he’ll say it to his face. He gets through the door in time to see Jimmy with Andy and Ollie tucked under each arm, striding to the door with a sour look.

Andy and Ollie are happy to see him, at least.

“Hi Lou!”

“We have to go now!”

“Bye Lou!”

“We’ll see you at school tomorrow!”

“Hi Andy, hi Ollie,” Lou says, because he knows between him being friendly with the twins and Tina being whatever-she-is with Jimmy Jr, it drives Jimmy up the wall.

Jimmy pauses for the exchange, and because Lou is blocking the doorway, and looks him over. He can see the exact moment everything clicks in Jimmy’s head, and gives him his pointiest grin.

“Something to say, Mr. Pesto?”

“I doubt this business can make enough to afford hormone treatments,” he says nastily, and pushes carefully past a stunned Lou out the door and across the street.

Lou dimly hears Dad’s parting shot of “At least I can accept my kids for who they are!”, but ignores it. Jimmy’s right, of course. Their family scratches by thanks to a moderate amount of success in the business, investments from dad’s rich friend, bets with Mr. Fischoeder, and his surprising flexibility on their rent, which is literally never on time. Medical emergencies are dealt with, but ongoing medical treatments? Ones that aren’t life or death? It’d be far too high an ask.

“Hey.”

Lou looks up to see Dad watching him. “Yeah?”

“You know, if that’s what you need, we can work something out. You know that, right?”

“I’m ten, Dad. I’ve got time.”

“I’m just saying…”

“It’s fine, Dad.”

“Okay,” Dad sighs, unwilling to push. “But I mean it.”

 _I know you do_ , Lou thinks, and gets to work.

One day, he thinks, he’s going to own this place. And assuming Jimmy Pesto is still next door being a slimy greasetrap with the moral compass of a worm, Lou is going to make sure Bob’s Burgers is so successful that it puts Jimmy out of business and into the streets.

Assuming they haven’t already by then.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bob is acutely aware of how badly he could mess up.

So, here’s the thing: Lou might just be trans, and Bob has no idea how to deal with that. Like, loving his kid no matter what, he can do that, right? It’s as easy as breathing, easier, because he has trouble breathing when he goes up stairs too fast but he can’t imagine not loving his kids, can’t imagine what the equivalent of going up stairs too fast would be for that. So he’s got that in the bag but, but this, this is- this is _bigger_ than that and it’s not about him, it’s about Lou and what (he? she?) needs, and Bob is bad at this emotional needs stuff at the best of times.

He calls Marshmallow, and is grateful when she agrees to meet up with him to talk. If anyone can help him, it’s someone who’s gone through the same kind of things.

“I think my kid might be trans,” he blurts out, as soon as he’s sure they’re somewhere private.

“Which one?” Marshmallow asks, and it’s an innocent enough question but the way she asks it- suddenly he’s rethinking all of his kids, has he missed something? He shakes his head. He’ll deal with that later.

“It’s Lou- you’ve seen her lately, right? The haircut and the clothes and the name…”

Marshmallow nods and hums an affirmative. “You know that doesn’t have to mean anything, don’t you? Some girls just like to look like boys. Is there something else?”

So he tells her about the farmer’s market. About the way Lou had stiffened at his side and refused to look at him when the guy had called (her? him?) his son. This gets him another nod.

“That does sound like something to me,” she says gently. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because…” Bob rubs at his neck. “Because I don’t know what to do. This is so far beyond anything I could have prepared for and I- I don’t wanna mess it up and end up breaking my kid’s heart like those parents you hear about. I, I guess I was just wondering if you could help me. Tell me what I'm supposed to do.”

The look she gives him when he says this makes his knees melt, and then she starts talking. He listens, tries to understand. He wants to do this right.

“The most important thing,” she finally says, “is that you accept him, no matter what.”

“That’s the most important thing? Not loving h- him?”

She shakes her head. “No, baby. You can love someone without accepting them for who they genuinely are. You can patronize him, or treat it like a phase and wait for him to grow out of it, or you can ignore it, and still love him. What he needs is to know that you’re gonna let him take the lead on his own identity.”

That makes sense. He thinks. And Bob can definitely do that. He’d been prepared to accept Louise even when she was going to grow up to be a master assassin wanted in eighteen countries and destined to die in a fiery explosion when interpol caught up to her and she decided they wouldn’t take her alive. Compared to that, accepting that Lou is his son sounds like a cakewalk.

“I think I can do that,” he says.

“I know you can.” She gives him another of those knee-melting looks. “You’re doing good so far. Givin’ him space to figure himself out and lettin’ him know you’re there when he’s ready. That’s good.”

“You think?”

“You’re gonna be fine, Bob.”

“Thanks, Marshmallow.”

**Author's Note:**

> Like this? Want to see more? Hit me up over on Tumblr @grifalinas!


End file.
